Page 6 of Remorseless Sinner

Gracie

M y legs were shaking when Saul took my arm and guided me outside.

To my surprise, he had a very comfortable car waiting for us. It almost looked like some kind of limousine, with a uniformed driver.

Now, where had he gotten this kind of money? When I knew him, he never had any money. He used to work at the gas station and as a janitor to contribute to household expenses in high school.

And he hadn't had any money. Where had he gotten all the money for this limo?

What had he been doing since getting out of jail?

Saul opened the door.

“After you, Mrs. Brennan,” he rumbled.

I could barely look at him after what I had done on his boot.

Surely it wasn’t right to have squirted so lavishly all over his feet.

But now I was trapped.

In those seven years he had been gone I should have found someone else to marry! But it hadn’t happened.

I was very unlucky in love.

Not even one single kiss. No second date.

I wished I hadn’t waited.

I wished I’d had one boyfriend.

Just to prove that it wasn’t true. He didn’t own me.

But somehow it had never worked out.

Every first date went nowhere. Guys who seemed eager, excited for a second date, inevitably ghosted me or sent me hasty, abrupt messages that they weren’t interested.

I didn’t understand it.

Modesty and humility were important, but I wasn’t hideous looking.

As I slid onto the slick seats and the driver took off, I was panting, gripping the seatbelt with white-knuckled hands.

Saul fished in a side pocket and handed me an ice-cold bottle of water.

“Drink this. You need to hydrate.”

“You're kidnapping me, and you’re worried about my water consumption?” I asked, somewhat hysterically.

“I didn’t kidnap you,” he said, his dark brows drawing together as he held out the bottle. “I married you. And if you don’t drink that, I’ll tan your ass.”

Surely he wouldn’t dare! But I didn’t like the look in his eyes, the way he was at the other end of the seat watching me, the way there was a slick, wicked liquid on my thighs.

So I quickly took a gulp or two of the water.

“Again,” Saul said.

“You can’t—you can’t control how much water I drink,” I countered, teetering on the edge between tears and screams, the tear tracks from this afternoon stuck to my cheeks.

Saul watched me with those greedy domineering dark eyes.

“I can,” he said. “I can control everything about you now. Everything about your body. And I want to see that perfect belly swelling up big for me.”

“Don’t you see?” I cried. “That this is wrong . Our parents are married. You’re my stepbrother. It’s—shameful.”

“There is no shame in loving you, Gracie,” he said sternly.

“You don’t love me! You just want to control me.”

“It’s the same thing,” Saul said.

His hands lay on both his massive thighs, and he seemed to suck all the oxygen up out of the limo, to make my throat constricted and my breathing shallow and panicky.

“It is not!” I cried, clenching my fists together. “I am going to fight you every step of the way!”

“You are going to drain every drop of that,” he ordered, pointing at the water bottle with that lascivious obscene rumble that his voice made.

“Now that we’re married, things are going to change. You are going to drink every drop of every glass of water I give you. Period.”

“No, I won’t!” I said in a petty voice, trying to edge away from him. My thighs still felt damp after the Wetting of the Boot, sweet and sticky liquid running down my leg.

Had I done it wrong? Was it supposed to feel that good?

I knew it wasn’t, surely it wasn’t right , that it had made me feel like that.

“Now hold my hand.” Saul said, turning his left palm up to me.

I felt my whole body freeze in horror.

Because he was left-handed and I was right-handed, he had always loved the family tradition of holding hands as we said our thanks to the Great Eye.

He claimed he needed the contact to curb his temptations .

But now I knew it was the exact opposite.

He wasn’t trying to curb anything.

“Not this—not this again,” I whispered. “It doesn’t—it doesn’t do anything.”

“I can’t be responsible for what I do if you fucking don’t,” Saul said.

My whole body trembled, my fingers seeming to shrink away. But he was looking so fiercely at me, those dark brows drawn together angrily.

For as long as I could remember, Saul had insisted contact with me was the only thing that could control him.

I’d done it more times than I could count, placing my much smaller hand over his beating heart, letting him cradle my hand in his, thread our fingers together.

When we were in high school I used to think it was my duty to do it. That Nimhe would want me too. That the Eye would be watching and expecting me to.

But then I noticed the way his mouth twisted up, the mocking glint in his eyes.

And I began to truly fear my tall stepbrother who towered over me.

Because the prickly, uncertain feeling down my spine when he touched me didn’t feel brotherly at all.

Tremulously, I put my hand out and he closed his big fingers over mine, but the moment he did I started to panic, scoot away from him on the big sleek seats of the limo.

But I couldn’t get very far.

“There’s no getting away from me now. You belong to me, wife.”

Saul was dragging me along the seat now, slowly and inexorably closer to him,

“Give in,” he said. “Give up. I’m your fucking king now.”

And for the first time in my life, I couldn’t feel Nimhe. Not at all.

I struggled to get away as he drew me closer, inch by inch.

Then when my thigh hit his, my wrist burning, I tried to pull away from him. But he jerked my arm and pulled me close, looking at me fiercely for one moment, then wrapping his other hand around my throat. My heartbeat fluttered around his fingers.

My lips were being tipped up.

He was going to kiss me.

And with his hand around my throat, I had no way to escape.

He bent forward, the soft collar of the suit brushing against my heated skin, and kissed me.

I froze, uncertain, afraid, determined not to give him any satisfaction.

His kiss was hard, demanding.

Like he was.

Like he always had been.

He smelled like leather, heat, something dark and smoky and wrong.

He would want to lay together now, I thought in a panic. He would want to put that huge terrifying bulge inside me.

And he would want to put a baby in me and I didn’t know how to escape him.

My lips stayed firmly tight, as I felt his tongue tease at the seam of my trap-shut mouth.

He dragged me closer by the throat, my skin burning, and with one hand he tightened those massive fingers. With the other he pinched my nose shut.

I was forced to open my lips, to gasp in desperation, and with a rumble of pleasure he thrust his tongue inside my mouth.

My heart was pounding.

Saul tasted forceful, wrong, and I tried to push him away, my hands ineffective against the massive strength of his chest, the muscles thick and solid under my fingers.

“Stop that,” Saul growled. “I bought you. I own you.”

His fingers wrapped tighter, squeezed around my throat and I gave a quick, hysterical scream and fainted.